Donald Trump is an unreasonable man. He makes wild claims that he cannot back up. Heattacks those who question him. He demands deference from his fellow presidential contenders and from the media, and in so doing he prevents the sort of freewheeling debate that is needed most when a party is choosing a nominee -- and a country is choosing a leader.

But that's not the problem with the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

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The problem is that, when Trump is unreasonable, political and media elites tend to give him a pass.

Trump's fellow Republicans are the worst. Party leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus fail to speak up even when Trump shames himself and the GOP.

Among the Republicans who are running for president, only a few of the also-rans (South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Ohio Governor John Kasich) have bothered to develop consistent or consequential critiques of the front-runner's abusive and irresponsible behavior.

Even when Republican candidates know Trump is wrong, they often give him a pass -- as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did when he was asked about Trump's claim that "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in northern New Jersey celebrated the September 11 attacks on nearby New York City. "I don't recall it happening. I don't think it did," was the tepid initial response from the usually feisty Christie, who only later got around to pushing back against Trump's outlandish rewrite of history.

When they should be calling Trump out, the other Republican candidates instead embrace the worst of his politics. Trump's fantasies are facilitated by supposedly "mainstream" Republicans, who seek to advance themselves by being even more outrageous than the man who continually sets new standards for political outrageousness.

The bottom line is this: Most Republicans, be they candidates or party leaders, do not want to say "no" to Donald Trump. And their cowardice only empowers the blowhard, as it creates a new definition of what is permissible in a race for the nomination of the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan.

But the Republicans who would be president are not the only ones who have, for the most part, failed to say "no" to Trump.

As the billionaire has made himself the king of all political media, broadcast and cable executives have tended to salivate at the prospect of Trump appearances on their networks. When cable networks promote Republican debates, Trump is featured at the front of ads that have all the subtlety of World Wrestling Entertainment promos. So, while Trump may face some questions and challenges, he is not used to hearing the word "no" from media anchors and editors and CEOs.

In fact, when Trump and Carson made pre-debate demands of CNBC -- for a shorter format -- the network capitulated.

So it was a big deal when CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker said "no" to Trump on Thursday.

Earlier in the week, the billionaire candidate threatened to boycott CNN's December 15 Republican debate unless the news network donated $5 million to the veterans charity of Trump's choice.

There's nothing wrong with objecting to the way in which the networks seek to profit from what should be a public service. Debates ought to be aired without commercials, and they should be broadly available at no cost for viewing on every available media platform.

There's certainly nothing wrong with encouraging businesses to give money to charities that serve veterans -- especially if that encouragement is coupled with an absolute demand for full funding of the Veterans Health Administration and other VA programs.

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.